some comments on Terry’s article:
…there is very little food, no fresh water, 97% are still without power, limited cell signals have stymied communications, and hospitals are struggling to keep people alive. There is no 911. Help is not on the way. If you have no cash, you can’t buy anything. As people get more desperate, violence increases
I could not have said it better myself.
chaos has begun. The mosquitos have multiplied like the plague. Dead livestock are all over the island including in whatever fresh water supplies they have.
I don’t know about livestock on all water supplies, but definitely many dead birds everywhere and thousands of livestock dead. However as far as I know a good portion of it was properly(but hastily) buried.
My family has been robbed and have lost whatever little they had left. The gang members are robbing people at gunpoint and the island is in desperation. People are shooting each other at gas stations to get fuel.
I fully expect that situations similar to that happened, probably more than once, but that was not my experience. I stood in three gas lines, a bank line, and many water and food lines(at the supermarket) and never felt threatened. I doubt the what the author describes in that paragraph was the experience of most, but I’m sure it happened. Crime was rampant for sure. I saw things that I dare not say.
They’re telling us to rescue them and get them out of the island because they are scared for their lives
I don’t believe that for a second
To Terry
The very low death count might be connected to the fact that the families of those who lost members to the storm are eligible to receive federal assistance.
I don’t think so. I think a variety of factors caused the wrong low death count.
1. The protocol was so burocratic and restrictive that it couldn’t cope with the chaos.
2. Personel was poorly trained resulting in massive break of the protocol when communications break down forced them to act independent from the chain of command.
3. Completely paralyzing fear of lawsuits by health care providers
4. Completely unqualified and negligent Public Safety Secretary combined with the chief disaster manager literally going on “vacation” in the middle of the emergency. More experienced and compassionate people would have looked at the jump in the mortality data and recognize there was something way off with their protocols. They should have used the mortality data to guide their response instead of going with an obviously flawed protocol.
I don’t think that in the beginning there was intention to deceive at all, even as the secretary of public safety was making fun of allegations of higher death counts. He was making fun of the allegations because he had 100% confidence in the protocols. He was inexperienced and detached enough to completely underestimate the magnitude of the disaster.